Merelaniite, a new mineral discovered by Michigan Tech professor John Jaszczak, was named Mineral Of the Year for 2016. The mineral was selected by the International Mineralogical Association (IMA). Sergey V. Krivovichev of the IMA says this annual initiative was started in 2014, and “recognizes a single new mineral species published in the previous year as most interesting and outstanding among others.”

Congratulations to Kamal Kant Chandrakar, who has received a prestigious NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship! Kamal is working for his PhD degree with Professor Shaw in the area of atmospheric physics.

He has also had his previous work cited by multiple professors. Congratulations Kamal!

Greg Odegard (MEEM) is the principal investigator on a project that has received a $1,000,000 research and development grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Ravi Pandey (Physics), Julia King (MEEM) and Trisha Sain (MEEM) are Co-Pis on the project titled “Institute for Ultra-Strong Composites by Computational Design (US-COMP).”

This is the first year of a five-year project potential totaling $14,999,995.